Aaron N. Tubbs

Finished the single-player campaign in Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II. Slightly irritated that, at the end of the campaign, they drop your squad without a chance for you to adjust their load-out. Should have just always kept them prepped, I guess. Didn’t really end up mattering, the end level was about as hard as a base defense.

The campaign has some story elements, but tends to be pretty cookie-cutter and repetitive. You see the same maps and scenarios a few dozen times as you’re leveling your squad. Definitely needs more variety, and feels like they squeezed a bit too much out of a little too little content.

Leveling the squads is interesting. It’s also strange playing an RTS with only (a maximum of, with a few execptions) four squads/units at a time. It means that gameplay almost constantly involves unit micromanagement.

So, despite those flaws, I think it’s interesting, if a bit one-sided. For as formulaic as it is, I’m not sure why they couldn’t also have campaigns for the other races.

The incongruous thing is that the multi-player game is completely different. Absolutely nothing in common with the campaign game, other than theme. At all. More units, resource-driven production, point capture (there are a lot of similarities in this regard with Demigod), and a polished version of the gameplay seen in previous titles in the series. This isn’t a bad thing, I think it actually plays pretty well. I haven’t done enough multiplayer play to really judge the balance and mechanics, but it seems like there’s a lot of variety and thought, and some nice mechanics built into the game to prevent epic slugfests or 3-minute zerg rushes. Need to spend more time with this aspect of the game to get a better sense of things, but for now, I’ll give the thing a 7/10.